> The tailscale client is open source Wrong. From the tailscale website:
https://tailscale.com/opensource " The client, which runs on each of a user’s devices, is mostly open source" " A closed source coordination server." If you dig around on Headscale, which is the open source version of the tailscale server, you can read between the lines and find out the truth. The truth is only the Linux "desktop" clients are fully open source. The GUI clients for MacOS and Windows are not. Basically what is going on is that since the Mac and Windows clients outnumber the Linux clients 10,00 to 1, the company is using marketing data collected from the ignorant users running Windows and MacOS who couldn't read a bash script if their lives depended on it, to fund the servers. They then throw a bone to the Linux people to let them use their directory server and trumpet the "open sourceness" of the Linux solution. Then the Linux users run around evangelizing this - like what you are doing here - and maybe a few handful of other Linux users pick it up - and then 100's of gullible MacOS and Windows users who want in on it, download the Windows client and think "that was easy" and then add their marketing data to the Borg collective. It really isn't that difficult to setup dynamic DNS and your own VPN server, whether you want to use OpenSSH or Wireguard or any other VPN protocol, running on your own gear, and running with 100% Open Source, even for the ignorant users MacOS and Windows clients. But each to their own. Have fun feeling superior pretending you are OSS friendly while your remote access is being funded by hundreds of thousands of Windows users who are being spied on by tailscale. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Barry Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2024 12:29 PM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Thanks! Re: Ziply fiber - fixed IP address? On Sat, Feb 10, 2024 at 2:12 PM Ted Mittelstaedt <[email protected]> wrote: > > No, because you are running tailscale software ON a PC, at administrative > level, which gives it total access to your PC and to the network that PC is > on. It can pull logs for your browsing and everything else, it has all > control. > > If I run an OpenVPN server on a router connected to the Internet - I just > need to know it's public IP which I can get from a free dns provider, and > then when I access it via the community vpn client - well I have all the code > used in both the server and the client. None of that code is calling home to > mama. > > Ted > The tailscale client is open source. I have not checked it for vulnerabilities and I installed it from the binary. I am glad you have analyzed the openvpn code. Bill
